"Lipply's Tavern" Play Report / Review

"Lipply's Tavern" comes from the "Adventure Sites I" compilation published by Coldlight Press. You can get it for free here:

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/477144/adventure-sites-i

This module, to me, is the crown jewel of the collection. I had the honor of getting to run it for a great group at North Texas RPG con this past Saturday. I know Grutzi from previous online games, participation in the "Classic Adventure Gaming"  and wanted to write-up my play report and review of the module for him.

First I will review the random name generator in Dragon Magazine #34. It is abhorrent and perfect for any Half-Elf characters you will ever play. See below.

On to the PLAY REPORT: 

Any spending a night in the village of Roanhorse have heard about the sad fate of Trim Lipply, retired adventurer. With his great wealth, he retired to a cozy hill outside of town to build a tavern in a hillside, as the Halflings do, but tragedy eventually struck as one day the little building was destroyed by fire, with several guests poor Lipply inside.

An odd group of adventurers (Girgbag the Curious, Half-Orc C/T 2/3; Fulglendanne the Batrachian, MU3; Jaxgarne the Hopeful, Halfling F/T 2/3; Tregarth, T4; Hawkblood Freeheart, Half-Elf C/R 3/2; and Surehelm Darkhammer, C/F/MU 2/2/1) wandered into Roanhorse, and spending the night there, heard of Lipply’s sad fate, heard that merchants in the environs were being raided, and heard rumors the tavern was cursed. Additionally, an unscrupulous alchemist approached them, telling them that Lipply loaned some equipment from him and, having died, never repaid. They would be paid handsomely if they returned it. Thus the adventurers set out.

Approaching the hill-tavern, Hawkblood examined the environs for tracks, finding booted prints approaching and coming. The many thieves listened down the chimneys, hearing skittering in one, snoring in another. The party decided to split, with Hawkblood going down the chimney where snoring was heard, and the rest of the group breaching through the front entrance. 

Hawkblood surprised an orc lounging next to a sleeping compatriot in the ruined kitchen. He really surprised the hell out of them, getting the time to cast Hold Person (I screwed up and thought it was only a 2 segment casting time but the orc saved anyways). The orc was quickly slain and the sleeping comrade joined him in Hell. 

The groups reconvened in the common room. They noticed barricades in the hallways, leaving them alone for the time being, and headed north through the kitchen. The mage’s unseen servant did the opening of doors for the well-oiled commando death squad of a group as they proceeded to explore at a rapid clip to best utilize the hand, finding a stairway down, a passage covered with webs (that they “nope’d” out of immediately), a heating room, and corpse sludge in a bathtub whose noxious fumes made them sick and weak for an hour. 

The group then found a linen closet and a valuable rainbow-colored linen of prestigious elfin make, which they left rather than lug around. Soon enough, they discovered a lone orc lookout in what was clearly once a guest room. The orc was put to the sword, but then hell began to break loose as orcs emerged from their rumpus room behind the party and from other lookout rooms. The swift party evaded the thrown club of the lookout, and ran him through. Two orcs blocked the doorway to the rumpus room as another fled down a hole in the earth. The guards were killed rather memorably, as the halfling fighter attempted to attack with the 10-foot pole and landed a rather decent blow (“sure John, you can attack with a 10 foot pole from reach, if you hit you only have a 1:100 chance of dealing 1 damage...what the hell do you mean you got a 1?”) In the room the party discovered the grizzly remains of merchants, including a cruel cornhole game played with human skulls. An emaciated merchant was saved from torture. The group overturned the heavy wooden table the orcs used for their perverse banquets to cover the hole the orc fled down, affixing it to the tavern’s floor with spikes. 

They hurriedly went downstairs, hoping to confuse the orcs. Tregarth the psychic thief felt that thing in Mobile Suit Gundam when two newtypes are near each other. 

They quickly found a locked door by the end of a suspiciously short hallway. In a belabored attempt to pick the lock, a ghost of a halfling appeared before them and began to sob loudly. After this, all hell broke loose as adjacent doors were flung open and orcs began to charge out into the hallway, whose brave fighters met them in the middle by a doorway orcs would continue to emerge from and the stairwell. It was a frenzy of blood, with wretched orc hitting the ground with blow after blow. 

Eventually, the shaman emerged from the south and the chief and his brutish hunchbacked guards (orgillions) emerged form the north. The shaman’s eyes began to glow behind his wooden mask and he engaged Tregarth in psychic combat – which would be the last mistake of his wretched life as his neurons were immediately overloaded by Tregarth’s fell neuromancy and his mind was crushed to a bitter pulp. Seeing the horrific sight, the morale of the orcs immediately broke and they attempted to flee up their rope ladder, only to find the entrance to the upper level blocked by some heavy object.

The leader and his guards were entangled in a web spell, but the surprising strength of the brutes rendered it useless within a minute’s time. That minute was key, though, as it prevented the rain of fists from falling on the party, and they eventually killed the honor guard and cornered the leader. Quaffing a volatile red potion in a last-ditch effort to escape, the leader breathed fire on the gathered heroic horde, dropping brave Surehelm. Girgbag saw to his wounds as the rest of the party put the Orc leader to death. The remaining orcs, failing to breach the barricade set over the hole earlier, were interrogated and discovered the pact made with the spiders – those wearing red armbands could be permitted to live. The rest of the orcs fled.

The adventurers discovered a locked door near the leader’s chambers, and proceeded to break through it, discovering Lipply’s hidden redoubt, treasure horde, and body. Following the outstretched finger of the little skeleton, they found a bewitching woman, professing to be a sorceress, inside a magical ward.  The woman claimed to be a wizard’s apprentice, magically detained for some obscure reason. The party did not fall for the obvious trap of a beautiful woman behind a secret door stuck in a magic circle and threw demon-related slurs at her until she revealed her true form (an Erinyes) and motivation – to claim the soul of Trim Lipply as punishment for going back on a deal and for capturing her. She told them she would do them a favor in return for freeing her. 

The party went over their materials and came up short on the “sending devils back to hell” front. Being valiant evil-hating types, they did not want to really screw with that and decided to put Lipply’s body in the room with her to torment her as long as the sigils held, and headed up top again.

After scouting the spider’s section with a potion of gaseous form, they decided they did not really want to fight approximately 20 spiders even if only two were giant, and decided to collect the treasure from the basement, the tapestry, and got out of dodge. The alchemist could get some other marks to find that missing gear. 

Thus went the expedition to Lipply’s tavern.

MISC NOTES:

• I decided to go with unusual pregens – it’s a con game, experience new stuff. I decided to use 5556 EXP because I like the number, it would be divisible by 2 and 3, and give most multi-classes at least lv 2. 
• I put my thumb on the Appendix P scale and made sure everyone had at least one thing. I think I went overkill and should have, at the least, PROHIBITED the randomly rolled “Scimitar of Speed +2” from the halfling fighter/thief, because that was absurdly good. 
• A little used rule about shields actually came relevant – due to Orgillions making a blow with each fist, some fighters actually got their shields “exhausted” during a round and had a worse armor class temporarily. I can see this rule having serious implications in pitched melees, and continue to be relevant into higher levels as magic shields become a significant source of armor class. All those rules about facings, surroundings, and shields make your melees more deadly and those HD1 hordes more than cannon fodder. 
• Psychic Crush is cool. I wonder what happened in the reality where psionic combat wasn’t IMMEDIATELY terminated. 
• The imbalance between the orc and spider sections is stark. While lv 3s would steamroll the orcs, the spiders are a different story and would very very easily slaughter groups not ready with a LOT of “slow poison”. 
• You can see the pregens below. Some of the minor magic items come from things made by a pal in a different server - he is deeply imaginative and his blog can be found here. I was mostly curious as to how many, if any, would be used...the amount was unfortunately small.
• The pregens: 
• https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1w3kV_Dw_E6xy6uetPzXfmZvWAlCpYCgW
• I probably spelled Orgillion a different way every time I typed it and I don't really care.

REVIEW AND THOUGHTS

I made the following major modifications to the dungeon:

• The orc shaman had psionic abilities
• All orcs carried clubs (IMO they REALLY need a ranged option).
• The orc chief was accompanied by two orgillions
• The orc chief had a single sip of a potion of fire breathing
• There were even more orcs than originally written.
• A closet near the devil had animated skeletons in it (mostly, I wanted to give the clerics something to turn – it feels wrong to have a con game where a key class ability would be completely unused).

I’ll start with where I think there is room for improvement:

• There is a grid on the map, as is normal. Notably any rooms and doors are not aligned to it, occupying the middle, because Grutzi is trying to kill me with his psionic powers. 
• For VTT use it would be a good idea if you made the clear unlabeled maps available to the general public. 
• While it was nice that you had pre-rolled HP for all the orcs at the start of the adventure, it would be more useful to include their HP in the rooms they are stationed.
• There should probably be a few more orcs. I think your idea about adding orgillions was really good, adds interest and challenge. 
• The section about Lipply’s ghost as its own random encounter check should be somewhere besides the bottom right corner of the map. 
• Given that there are so damn many doors it would be beneficial to mention how they open and which are the “locked” sides.

This a dungeon rather than "small adventure site". Legalistic quibbling about definitions don’t matter a whit, because this is awesome either way, and it is super easy to throw into your campaign. The dungeon is expertly crafted and information at the beginning is presented very well, introducing the factions and dungeon specific mechanics with perfect clarity. It's dense, but do not recoil from the wall of text, as it is completely managable and was easy to use at the table.

I am slightly understating how good this is. I think this is a good model for presenting information. More module-craters should read this. The only thing I would say is “hidden” is the mechanics of Lipply’s ghost sometimes appearing. VERY importantly, all of the flavor has mechanical effects! Webbed-up windows require feats of strength, climbing down chimneys has its risks clearly outlined, the impacts of being loud are apparent and evident (certain actions cause a ruckus which draws in encounters for adjacent rooms in a variable number of rounds – and the map calls out what creatures are in what rooms, making this simple to adjudicate). 

If you’re writing a dense, tightly packed dungeon area or lair, READ THIS AND USE IT AS A MODEL. When you compare to other dense, small-font-two-column-text works like "Tizun Thane" or its magazine-era ilk, they do not even compare in terms of ease of use. Great job Grutzi.

I think characters of level 3 and 4 will steamroll the orc section and smart ones will not antagonize the spiders, dumb ones would quickly meet an ignominious end. I think more valuables should be in the directly spider controlled section to encourage bravery, folly, and total death. Perhaps a webbed corpse in a cocoon near an egg sack has many a golden ring and clearly magical necklaces/weapons...you can’t get him down without possibly tearing the egg sack...sure you have a red armband and the spiders aren’t gonna come at you on-sight, but should you push your luck?

I REALLY liked how there is no obvious solution to the devil problem. Sorry,  no dispel evil scroll conveniently in the webs! What are you gonna do about her?

Overall, this is tightly crafted and is “good vanilla” of the utmost quality. I would give 4/5. 

I would love to see a 10-page adventure from Grutzi of similar text and information density. I think it would blow minds. 

(Unrelated: I forgot I made a blog. I stopped posting for two reasons: 1) would rather prep than write play reports 2) had to stop my Fomalhaut campaign last August due to my schedule being thrown into disarray from a new job. I've played and ran an OK amount since then. I should probably review modules I've ran. I think that would be a neat gimmick for a blog - only rate stuff you've ran...hm.)